The Battalion Artist: A Navy Seabee's Sketchbook of War in the South Pacific, 1943-1945

The Battalion Artist explores the three years, three months, and three days of Nat Bellantoni’s life on the Pacific front in World War II. He had known since childhood that he wanted to be—that he in fact was—an artist. When he packed his seabag and took leave of his family and his sweetheart to go to war, he knew that the best way to manage the narrative of his life and to cope with the ups and downs of his feelings was to create images—visual records that spoke of what he felt, as well as...